Good morning. I pulled this together from reviewing all of the non-transcripts that I did this spring to sort of summarize what the coaches said about the players and I think we get a pretty good idea of where the defense is after looking through all of that.

1. For me, I think the defense’s best player is going to come down to a few players. C.J. Baskerville, Ben Roberts, and Dooda Banks. I tend to think that C.J. Baskerville is going to be the secondary’s best player. Everyone talks about the athleticism of Marcus Ramon-Edwards and his time is coming, but Baskerville should shine in 2023. Roberts’ fantastic freshman season will likely continue into his sophomore year and would expect the impact to be significant, not just tackles, but making plays behind the line of scrimmage and making a bigger impact. With Banks, I think with the additional snaps, he’ll shine and I think the coaches believe that he’s the most consistent of the options along the defensive line. Who do you think will be the best player on the defense next year? Is it someone I’m missing?

2. Linebacker will be the best position on defense, but it’s also the thinnest I think. There is no doubt that Jacob Rodriguez and Ben Roberts are all-conference type of players. I think they are both that good and with Roberts having such a terrific freshman year. But I have my doubts that Bryce Ramirez is ready to fill a back-up role full time in case of an injury and the talk is that freshman John Curry had a fantastic camp, but he’s so green. Ramirez went from being an edge player to linebacker in an offseason and a nearly career ending injury. Ty Kana has not made the impact that I thought he would  and wasn’t mentioned the entire spring. Justin Horne is a redshirt freshman and a bit behind on the depth chart. If there are injuries, could Miquel Dingle move back to linebacker if there was an injury and is he better that Ramirez and Curry?

3. I’m not sure who will be “the guy” to rush the passer. The staff stressed that this will be by committee and you wonder if that means there’s not “the guy” and that worries me a bit. That’s not to say that there’s no option because there are plenty: Isaac Smith; Joseph Adedire; Isaiah Crawford; Dylan Spencer; and Harvey Dyson. I think that Adedire and Spencer got the most good words, but Dyson was right there too. Smith and Crawford were slightly injured or coming back from injury so at this point they are unknowns. Lots of flashes from these guys, but dominant players are good and right now, there hasn’t been a dominant player, or at least what we’ve been told. If I had to pin it on one guy, I’d say that Adedire is the closes thing to a stud with this group, but they’ll need multiple guys to do that.

4. I don’t know if we know enough about defensive tackle. E’Maurion Banks and Quincy Ledet were the spring stars, but we don’t know much about the two transfers. De’Braylon Carroll had a bit of fanfare, but James Hansen was getting over an injury I think and DeRuyter said specifically that Trevon McAlpine was inconsistent at best. That doesn’t leave you with a ton of options. I’m pretty confident in Banks, I think he’s going to be a star. I’m not sure about the rest. The good news is that Carroll was good at Rice and Hansen was okay at Nevada. I’ll be curious how deep this group gets and Braylon Rigsby and Jayden Cofield are the young guys on the horizon and they were talked about to some extent, but don’t know if they’ve forced their way into the rotation.

5. The young secondary will arrive next year. With Baskerville, McCarty, and Lux sort of leading the way in terms of age, I think that by next year all of that recruited youth will be on full display and I think I’m pretty happy with how the staff has tried to develop those young players. Lewis, Sanford, Horn, Peoples, Jordan, and Dingle will all be main players in 2024, but all of these players have seen a good amount of snaps, which should leave the secondary in a really good spot moving forward. And the coaches raved about Horn and Peoples this spring. I think ideally, this is how every position group should work, that there’s not some sort of major drop-off from year to year. I also find it interesting that Baylor transfer A.J. McCarty can play all 5 positions, although he’s currently at the star spot. Javeon Wilcox, the TCU transfer, can play both safety spots and with that sort of position flexibility, I think it’s one of two things, that the coaches don’t know where to put him or he’s so good that they want him on the field not matter what. I think the latter is true.